Robert Neffson (born December 28, 1949) is an American painter known for his photorealistic street scenes of various cities around the world, museum interiors and for early still lifes and figure paintings. [1]
Neffson was born in New York City and grew up in Little Neck, New York. He was raised by a single father, after his mother, an artist, died when he was seven. He began attending classes at the Art Students League of New York in 1961, under the instruction of artists such as Lennart Anderson [2] and Edwin Dickinson. [3] As a student he copied old masters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His study of, among others, the painters Jan Vermeer, Thomas Eakins, Camille Corot, and Canaletto, developed his skills further. While attending the Boston University College of Fine Arts, from which he graduated cum laude in 1971, [1] Neffson's work attracted the attention of his professors, including James Weeks and the abstract expressionist painter, Philip Guston.
He also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine and the Tanglewood Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts, both on full scholarship. Achieving his master's degree in Fine Arts for Painting in 1973, again from Boston University, Neffson taught briefly at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Fisher College in Boston. He received the Massachusetts Arts and Humanities Foundation [4] and the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Memorial Foundation [5] Grants in support of his work.
In 1976, Neffson's life and work were significantly changed when he was awarded the Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship for Painting [1] in Rome. During his stay in Italy, he met William Bailey [6] at the American Academy in Rome, who had a strong influence on his still life paintings at the time. Upon his return in 1977, Neffson was given a year long Artist-in-Residence Grant by the Roswell Museum and Art Center [7] in New Mexico, followed by teaching positions at Arizona State University in Tempe and Pennsylvania State University. At that time he received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Visual Artist Grant [8] in 1983. He has also taught at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and has continued to teach Painting from Life for many years at the Art Students League of New York. [1] [2]
Neffson was a member of the First Street Gallery [9] in New York from 1978 to 1985, during which time he had numerous solo exhibitions, as well as group shows with such fellow artists as Catherine Murphy. While represented from 1985 to 1998 by Gallery Henoch [10] in New York City, he was inspired by Richard Estes and Chuck Close and was among a group of second-generation Photorealist painters that were exhibiting in SoHo galleries such as O. K. Harris Works of Art [11] and Louis Meisel Gallery. [12]
In 2004, Neffson was commissioned to create a painting of the near-completed new 7 World Trade Center building, which was presented to developer Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties in a ceremony presided over by New York State Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. [1] [2] [13]
In 2007, Neffson authored the catalog to the British painter Clive Head's [14] exhibition at Marlborough Fine Arts, London. [15] The text consists of an introduction and letters between the two artists centered on their discussion of the creative process. [16]
Robert Neffson joined Hammer Galleries [1] in 1998, the New York institution. He has also exhibited at London's Plus One Gallery [17] since 2005. In 2009 he was invited to join the Bernarducci.Meisel Gallery [18] in New York City. The director of the gallery, Louis K. Meisel, [12] originated the phrase Photorealism in 1968, which was first used in a Whitney Museum [19] catalog in 1970. Neffson also began exhibiting with the Albemarle Gallery [20] in London during the same year. He continues to produce works that are exhibited and collected internationally.
Neffson sees the geometry of the city foremost—the parallel lines of the architecture, the grids of the streets and windows, the angular shadows the sun casts between skyscrapers. One of Neffson's fortes is sorting out messy networks of objects, shadows, and reflections in store windows, which he does by systematically breaking down each component into a series of perfect planes.
— ARTNews, November 2004. [21]
Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Although the term can be used broadly to describe artworks in many different media, it is also used to refer to a specific art movement of American painters that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Audrey Lenora Flack was an American visual artist. Her work pioneered the art genre of photorealism and encompasses painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography.
Glennray Tutor is an American painter who is known for his photorealistic paintings. He is considered to be part of the Photorealism art movement. His paintings are immersed with bright colors, nostalgic items, metaphor, and with a complete focus on detail. Tutor is a graduate of the University of Mississippi where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Art and English in 1974 and his Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting in 1976.
Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures. The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has developed since the early 1970s. Carole Feuerman is the forerunner in the hyperrealism movement along with Duane Hanson and John De Andrea.
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Clive Head is a painter from Britain.
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Roberto Bernardi is a photorealist painter who explores the beauty of everyday life though the reflections and transparencies in his still life paintings, using as his main subject plates and glasses, kitchens appliances, dishwashers, fridges and more recently lollypops and candies.
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Frank Bernarducci is a New York City art dealer and curator. He is currently the owner of Bernarducci Gallery, located at 525 West 25th Street in New York, NY. Bernarducci began exhibiting Graffiti art in the 1980s in the East Village while being the director of Frank Bernarducci Gallery. Bernarducci continues to curate exhibitions featuring emerging and seasoned artists. His gallery is known for exhibiting realist and Photorealist art.
Yigal Ozeri is an Israeli artist based in New York City. He is known for large-scale cinematic portraits of young women in landscapes. As one of the leading Photorealism painters, his large-scale oil paintings tend to capture ethereal scenes of women in nature. His son is Adam Ozeri, a professional soccer player.
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